Roche to drop HIV therapy research

Roche, one of the world’s largest international pharmaceuticals groups, has decided to abandon research on medicines to treat HIV in a significant blow to doctors treating the spiralling international Aids epidemic. In a memo circulated this week to Aids specialists and activists, executives said because of disappointing results in clinical trials, the company had cancelled its programme for the compounds in development that were targeting two different ways to attack HIV. Source: Financial Times"

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Dutch smoking ban: No tobacco in your joints, cafes ordered

Dutch coffee shops, long considered as synonymous with the Netherlands as tulips or attacking football, face a new challenge from today when a ban on smoking tobacco in restaurants and cafes comes into effect.

The owners claim the law, which will allow customers to light up potent tobacco-free pure cannabis joints but ban milder spliffs in which tobacco is mixed with cannabis, threatens to put hundreds of them out of business.

“It’s a bit like saying to someone you can go into a cafe and you can buy a beer, but you can’t drink it there – you’ll have to stick to whisky, rum and vodka,” said Paul Wilhelm, owner of De Tweede Kamer, a popular Amsterdam coffee shop. As most patrons prefer milder joints in which cannabis is mixed with tobacco, and only 18% favor much stronger, pure cannabis spliffs, the fear is that the days of the coffee shops could be numbered.

The catering industry said 1,600 coffee shops across the country were up for sale because their owners were convinced their businesses were doomed.

Wilhelm, who has run his cafe since 1985, said the law was in danger of “tearing the heart out” of Amsterdam’s social life. “The focus of the De Tweede Kamer has always been social contact,” he added. “They’ll destroy that with what I see as a ridiculous law.”

Mark Jacobsen, chairman of the BCD, a nationwide association of coffee shop owners, said proper implementation of the law would require inspectors to check each cannabis joint for tobacco content.

“It’s absurd. In other countries they look to see whether you have marijuana in your cigarette, here they’ll look to see if you’ve got cigarette in your marijuana.”

The Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, which is responsible for enforcing the ban, said it had trained around 200 inspectors. “They can tell the difference between a mix or a pure joint from its smell and appearance,” said a spokesman. Some coffee shop owners have sought alternative ways to deal with the conundrum and allow their clientele to still enjoy a tobacco-free cannabis spliff without it being too strong.

One inventor, who calls himself Evert, is doing a roaring trade in £400 vapourisers – in which hashish or cannabis is heated to 180C and the resulting steam is directed into a balloon from which smokers inhale. The vapouriser is claimed to be the mildest way to consume pure cannabis.

While some cafes have said they will simply lay on more pure cannabis brownies or “space cakes”, others have built smoking chambers within their premises which are off-limits to staff. Some are also providing alternatives to tobacco, such as the herb coltsfoot.

Martial von Beenkom, owner of Boerejongens (Young Farmers) on the outskirts of Amsterdam, has turned his cafe into a smoke-free tea salon where he will sell cannabis on a takeaway basis. “Most people come here to buy their grass which they then smoke elsewhere,” he said.

The health minister, Ab Klink, said the law would stay, arguing that as well as helping to improve people’s health it might help to stamp out idleness. “Consumers who spend the whole day hanging out in coffee shops will find other things to do,” he said.

Source: The Guardian.

Human egg makes accidental debut on camera

“The release of the oocyte from the ovary is a crucial event in human reproduction,” says Jacques Donnez at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in Brussels, Belgium.

Observing ovulation in humans is extremely rare, and previous images have been fuzzy. Donnez captured the event by accident while preparing to carry out a partial hysterectomy on a 45-year-old woman. The release of an egg was considered a sudden, explosive event, but his pictures, to be published in Fertility and Sterility, show it taking place over a period of at least 15 minutes.

Shortly before the egg is released, enzymes break down the tissue in the mature follicle, a fluid-filled sac on the surface of the ovary that contains the egg. This prompts the formation of a reddish protrusion, and after a while a hole appears, from which the egg emerges, surrounded by support cells. It then enters a Fallopian tube, which carries it to the uterus.

While there are no immediate medical implications from the pictures, Darryl Russell, who researches reproductive health at the University of Adelaide in Australia, says they are remarkable: “In animals, even when we control hormone levels – allowing us to predict the time at which ovulation will occur – it is very rare to see it in progress.”

Source: New Scientist magazine, 11 June 2008.

Cannabis will be reclassified as a Class B drug, increasing the penalties for possession from two to five years in jail, Jacqui Smith said today.

Cannabis will be reclassified as a Class B drug, increasing the penalties for possession from two to five years in jail, Jacqui Smith said today.

The decision comes despite the Government’s panel of drugs experts saying that changed cannabis from C to B would not deter millions from smoking the drug. Cannabis was downgraded from Class B to Class C in 2004, but there has been widespread concern about the increased prevalence of stronger “skunk” varieties of the drug.

The Home Secretary said she was concerned about the mental health effects of smoking super-strength skunk cannabis, which now accounts for 80 per cent of street seizures.

There were also suggestions that young people were “binge smoking” to get the maximum possible high. She said: “Some people are binge smoking to achieve intoxication. If they do that the consequences might be very serious for their mental health. “There is a compelling case to act now rather than risk the future health of young people.

“Where there is a clear and serious risk to mental health I err on the side of caution. I make no apology for that. I am not prepared to ‘wait and see’” Mrs Smith accepted all of the recommendations from the Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs apart from the suggestion to keep cannabis at Class C. This means that the Government will now put cannabis warnings on packets of cigarette papers and ban the paraphernalia necessary to smoke cannabis, like the seeds. In future, courts will treat anyone found guilty of supplying cannabis in hospitals, schools or universities supplying cannabis as an “aggravating factor” when they are sentenced.

Mrs Smith said she hoped reclassifying cannabis as a Class B drug would send out a message to police forces to treat possession of cannabis more seriously. Forces would operate a “three strikes” approach to possession which would escalate the penalties for repeat possession from a warning to a court appearance. The Government was also working with six major power companies to close down cannabis farms in terraced houses by cutting off their illegal electricity supply. The news came despite the advisory panel saying that reclassifying cannabis as a Class B drug would not deter millions of people from smoking cannabis.

The council’s chairman Professor Sir Michael Rawlins warned that the row over whether the criminal risks of being caught with cannabis was a distraction. He said: “There is a danger that going to class B is seen as the solution. The idea that putting it up to B will solve all these recommendations is naive and it is very distracting from the real goals. “Cannabis should be tackled as a public health issue.”

The council acknowledged that the greatest cause for concern was the possible effect of the drug on mental health. There was evidence of a “probable, but weak, causal link between psychotic illness, including schizophrenia, and cannabis use” but more research was needed. But “to prevent one case of schizophrenia in men aged 20 to 24 about 5,000 men would have to be prevented from ever smoking cannabis”, the panel’s report said. Prof Rawlins said that smoking “some cannabis” – say 10 joints a month – could double the risk of developing schizophrenia from 1 in 3,100 to 1, in 1,900 among men aged 20 to 24.

For women, the risk fell from one in 9,900 to one in 5,300. However more research was needed, Prof Rawlins added. Prof Rawlins said that three of the 21 members of the committee had voted to return cannabis to class C, which would increase the penalties for possession from two years to five years in jail.

He thought it unlikely anyone would resign if, as expected Home Secretary Jacqui Smith ignores the panel and returns cannabis to Class B status. He said: “My advice is to tough it out.” The panel’s report, Cannabis: Classification And Public Health, was published after an inquiry into the harmfulness of cannabis to individuals and society. Council members were reported to be angered by comments from Gordon Brown which suggested they were in favor of reclassifying cannabis before the council had even started to look at the evidence.

The drug was originally downgraded from class B to class C by David Blunkett, when he was home secretary, to enable police to concentrate on tackling hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine. The downgrading meant users no longer faced the presumption of arrest. Instead, they were allowed to escape with a formal warning. The penalties for possession also increased from two to five years. Last week, the promise to toughen the law on cannabis was heavily criticized after police vowed to continue letting offenders off with a slap on the wrist.

Source: Telegraph.

Israel tests Ecstasy on war trauma victims: report

JERUSALEM (AFP) — An Israeli medical team has started tests using the drug Ecstasy as a treatment for conflict – linked post – traumatic disorders, the Maariv daily reported on Friday. Doctors at the Beer-Yakov psychiatric hospital south of Tel Aviv are testing the response of Israeli post-traumatic disorder patients to MDMA, the active ingredient in the drug.

Rakefet Rodriguez, Sergio Marchiveski and Marina Kaufchicz, who are leading the experimental programme, are convinced that psychotheraphy is crucial in curing patients and that Ecstasy can help them to recover.

The doctors believe the drug has both calming and stimulating effects that can help patients not only overcome trauma but also dominate it, Maariv said.

Almost 500 reserve troops suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder following the 34 – day war that pitted Israeli troops against Lebanon’s Hezbollah Shiite militia in July and August 2006, the paper said.

Ecstasy, which is illegal in most countries, is one of the world’s most commonly used narcotics.

Source: AFP.